Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Austerlitz

I wish I was a wine connoisseur because it would mean I could use an
informed evidence-based example of a fine wine cleansing the palate
ready for the next course as an analogy for my reading of Max Sebald. But
sad to say I know nothing about wine beyond bottle-cork-red-white so
I'm going to have to resort to a rather second rate analogy and settle
for Listerine instead, sorry.You know that mouthwash, the one that lifts
the roof off your mouth via the top of your head and wakes you up to a
whole new set of tastes? In fact it's possibly a better analogy
because I am making interesting if not startling discoveries as I read
Max akin to clearing away the old flavours, the remnants of yesterday's
garlic and setting you up with a completely new reading taste, all the
left-overs that have gone before are erased for the moment and the next
book you pick up, no matter who has written it, is infused with a freshness that leaves all your reading
feeling quite invigorated and renewed.Now in the end I think
Listerine possibly preferable to a bottle of Chateau Neuf de Nuits St
Georges Cabernet de Sauvignon Blue Nun 1966, just don't drink it.I
still haven't got hyper-Sebaldacaemia and suspect I may never succumb,
I could just carry on reading him forever because the writing offers
something so different from the normal fare and all tied up with that
steady flow of words which ignite such flights of the imagination.
Austerlitz my latest Max Sebald read and a book that has lasted since before Christmas which is odd. Odd in that it is an extremely difficult book to stop reading because it's like a slow-speed but non-stopping train, there is absolutely nowhere to get off. No chapters, no paragraphs, no natural pauses where you think 'right I'll go and make a cup of tea' in fact just one break in the book that I can recall, so you are almost forcibly and relentlessly rooted to the text.Max Sebald has you trapped on this particular journey in more ways than one.You literally almost have to tear yourself away mid-sentence and as you do you feel a wrench which I think you are supposed to.This I'm learning is what Max Sebald's writing does for me, there is an actual identifiable tangible physical feeling to be experienced alongside the read.But others in history have been trapped on train journeys too and this probably all fits in with the steady flow of train and railway imagery with which the book is littered. Jacques Austerlitz (and was my brain meant to keep on and on momentarily reading that as Auschwitz?) is retracing his forgotten childhood having arrived in England in 1939 on the kindertransport from Europe.His adult journey from a state of unbelonging to one of self-discovery is full of traumas, side tracking and emotional turmoil as Jacques makes the inevitable discoveries about what happened to his family after he had been put on that train.His identity slowly emerges but the pain and anguish is considerable.The sun doesn't seem to shine a great deal and coupled with the fact that we've had non-stop dark, grey afternoons here for weeks now that may be why I took so long to read Austerlitz. Twenty or so pages at one go sufficient to fuel hours of thought.In his usual oblique style and with Max Sebald's photographic imagery interwoven this is one of those books you can only suggest that people have to discover for themselves and the time will need to be right for it to work.I suspect this is a book that will invoke a fresh response and mean something different to every single person who reads it.I tried Austerlitz a few years ago and just couldn't fathom it at all, but this time I'm on a roll and I've made it.
Alongside I have another beautiful book published by The Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Searching for Sebald edited by Lise Patt with Christel Dillbohner. This will be perceived by many as a coffee table book, but be assured it is one that will
spend very little time on the coffee table here at any rate and is looking
far from pristine very quickly. Over 600 pages of pure Sebaldian magic, a multi-media based approach to his work, theoretical essays blend with art history, film and photographic studies and a fascinating research piece, The Truth Which Lies Elsewhere, a retracing of Max Sebald's walk through East Anglia so stunningly revealed in The Rings of Saturn.I hardly know where to turn next but think I will hover around with my Austerlitz thinking and this book for a while before I head to Vertigo, then only Campo Santo left.Woe is me, rations are almost consumed.

Comments

Austerlitz

I wish I was a wine connoisseur because it would mean I could use an
informed evidence-based example of a fine wine cleansing the palate
ready for the next course as an analogy for my reading of Max Sebald. But
sad to say I know nothing about wine beyond bottle-cork-red-white so
I'm going to have to resort to a rather second rate analogy and settle
for Listerine instead, sorry.You know that mouthwash, the one that lifts
the roof off your mouth via the top of your head and wakes you up to a
whole new set of tastes? In fact it's possibly a better analogy
because I am making interesting if not startling discoveries as I read
Max akin to clearing away the old flavours, the remnants of yesterday's
garlic and setting you up with a completely new reading taste, all the
left-overs that have gone before are erased for the moment and the next
book you pick up, no matter who has written it, is infused with a freshness that leaves all your reading
feeling quite invigorated and renewed.Now in the end I think
Listerine possibly preferable to a bottle of Chateau Neuf de Nuits St
Georges Cabernet de Sauvignon Blue Nun 1966, just don't drink it.I
still haven't got hyper-Sebaldacaemia and suspect I may never succumb,
I could just carry on reading him forever because the writing offers
something so different from the normal fare and all tied up with that
steady flow of words which ignite such flights of the imagination.
Austerlitz my latest Max Sebald read and a book that has lasted since before Christmas which is odd. Odd in that it is an extremely difficult book to stop reading because it's like a slow-speed but non-stopping train, there is absolutely nowhere to get off. No chapters, no paragraphs, no natural pauses where you think 'right I'll go and make a cup of tea' in fact just one break in the book that I can recall, so you are almost forcibly and relentlessly rooted to the text.Max Sebald has you trapped on this particular journey in more ways than one.You literally almost have to tear yourself away mid-sentence and as you do you feel a wrench which I think you are supposed to.This I'm learning is what Max Sebald's writing does for me, there is an actual identifiable tangible physical feeling to be experienced alongside the read.But others in history have been trapped on train journeys too and this probably all fits in with the steady flow of train and railway imagery with which the book is littered. Jacques Austerlitz (and was my brain meant to keep on and on momentarily reading that as Auschwitz?) is retracing his forgotten childhood having arrived in England in 1939 on the kindertransport from Europe.His adult journey from a state of unbelonging to one of self-discovery is full of traumas, side tracking and emotional turmoil as Jacques makes the inevitable discoveries about what happened to his family after he had been put on that train.His identity slowly emerges but the pain and anguish is considerable.The sun doesn't seem to shine a great deal and coupled with the fact that we've had non-stop dark, grey afternoons here for weeks now that may be why I took so long to read Austerlitz. Twenty or so pages at one go sufficient to fuel hours of thought.In his usual oblique style and with Max Sebald's photographic imagery interwoven this is one of those books you can only suggest that people have to discover for themselves and the time will need to be right for it to work.I suspect this is a book that will invoke a fresh response and mean something different to every single person who reads it.I tried Austerlitz a few years ago and just couldn't fathom it at all, but this time I'm on a roll and I've made it.
Alongside I have another beautiful book published by The Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Searching for Sebald edited by Lise Patt with Christel Dillbohner. This will be perceived by many as a coffee table book, but be assured it is one that will
spend very little time on the coffee table here at any rate and is looking
far from pristine very quickly. Over 600 pages of pure Sebaldian magic, a multi-media based approach to his work, theoretical essays blend with art history, film and photographic studies and a fascinating research piece, The Truth Which Lies Elsewhere, a retracing of Max Sebald's walk through East Anglia so stunningly revealed in The Rings of Saturn.I hardly know where to turn next but think I will hover around with my Austerlitz thinking and this book for a while before I head to Vertigo, then only Campo Santo left.Woe is me, rations are almost consumed.

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.

Team Tolstoy BookmarkDon't know your Bolkonskys from your Rostovs?
An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.

Port Eliot Festival

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